Tag Archives: shrub border

Pink Rhododendron Blooms in February

02/29/2016 svseekins Leave a comment

Pink blooming Rhododendron in February, garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

Like so many February days on the West Coast, it’s grey & overcast. C & I head out for a walk over Mt. Tolmie anyway. A block or so along Henderson Road, we’re surprised by pink blossoms at the edge of the sidewalk. February blooms on a rhododendron ??? Don’t they usually bloom in May? What a treat.

It’s a big shrub, and it’s covered in buds & flowers! This is not just a confused branch sending out an aberrant flower… This must be the regular season for this species to bloom. Sweet.

I take a photo, then we continue our walk.

But right next door is another blooming bush! Well, I suppose this makes sense. Who doesn’t yearn for the promise of spring at this time of year? I’m guessing these neighbors share garden notes over the fence.

A couple more houses along the way… Another pink rhododendron.

Around the corner; another!

Down the block: a 5th!

By this time we are sensing a trend. C & I make bets on how many pink rhodos we ‘ll find along our regular route.

The 6th discovery is down the next street.

Then it isn’t until after cresting Mt. Tolmie Park, and heading back home along the streets of the south-western slope, that we find more blooming evergreens.

One is behind a fence (beside a blooming forsythia!)

Two more grow in the garden of a fellow who’d moved into the neighborhood about the same time we had.

The last one has buds just starting to open. It’s right in front of a pink tree. (Perhaps a Cherry? or Plum?).

There might be other rhodos we missed, but I reckon 11 is a pretty good collection – – certainly more than either of us expected. Perhaps we should start looking for an early rhododendron for our garden. (Not just to make an even dozen. or keep up with the Jones’s, or build community, but for our good mental health.)

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attracting birds, months 04-06: spring, months 07-09: summer, natives, urban deer

Hardhack

07/17/2015 svseekins 1 Comment

It first caught my eye on a walk in the sunny, rolling hills of Panama Flats. What a pretty shrub! AND It’s happily growing in the wild with no gardener to fuss over it!!!

hardhack, steeplebush garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — hardhack
photo by SVSeekins

My mind flashes to fantasies of a low maintenance garden. Isn’t this shrub a good candidate for membership?

My go-to native plant guide, Plants of the Pacific Northwest, helps identify it:
Common names: hardhack & steeplebush.
BUT it’s the Latin name that rings bells with me: Spirea Douglasii
Spirea !!
Cousin to the decorative spirea that I see in so many urban landscapes.
Very encouraging.

non-native spirea garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — non-native spirea
photo by SVSeekins

The Douglas Spirea ‘s deciduous leafs are grayish with woolly texture which leads me to guess that they’re deer tolerant. Word has it that black tail deer graze it. Then another source says it is deer resistant Who knows?

It tops out at 6ft./ 2m, which is handy for hedging.

The typical home is in moist areas. That explains why it’s found at Panama Flats as well as Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary. It’s suckering habit produces dense thickets along stream banks.

The pink steeples of Hardhack first appear in June. The flowers last through the heat of summer eventually turning to brown seed clusters that hold on long after the leaves fall. That’s a luxuriously long season for feeding bees, then birds!

This plant is just as pretty as the classic lilac (syringa) & butterfly bush (buddleja). Both of those shrubs can be dominating in a garden landscape, seeding or suckering willy-nilly. I reckon hardhack is a choice replacement option, especially because it is much more of a food source to local birds, pollinators, & wild life. It can be dominating like the other two, but only in very moist situations.

I’d like to grow hardhack in my yard, but the moisture requirements are too high. We do have a ditch that would supply the moisture needed… maybe C would give up a patch of grass along there ??

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attracting birds, drought tolerant, evergreens, months 07-09: summer, urban deer

Bottlebrush

07/31/2013 svseekins 1 Comment

Most of the time the Bottlebrush is just an unusual evergreen weeping shrub. Its spiky, lance-shaped leaves don’t look like the needles of any coniferous tree I’ve ever seen. But it’s kinda funky – – and you know, I appreciate funky. 🙂 So it makes perfect sense to me to plant one as a backgrounder in the shrub border.

bottlebrush in bloom Callistemon garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

It gets very little notice when the rhododendron right beside it blooms in May.

But come July, the spring spectacular in the garden fades. The hummingbirds & butterflies shift their attention as the Callistemon commands centre stage. For a couple of weeks, the red blooms are spectacular: a true summery colour.

bottlebrush blooms Callistemon garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

The flowers are 5 inches long + 2 inches wide, but STRANGE….

Instead of bobbing at the top of stem-like normal flowers do, the bottlebrush flower petals circle the branch itself. These blossoms remind me of the gizmo we use to wash out wine bottles. The name bottlebrush is àpropos.

As the blooms fade the seed clusters add a little interesting texture as the shrub returns to its regular backdrop duties.

bottlebrush seed head Callistemon garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

I know bottlebrush has coastal Australian origins, so I”ve crossed my fingers it’ll survive our occasional winter freeze. So far, so good.

It’s reputed to like a little moisture too, but after it became established I’ve really reduced the mollycoddling. With a whole lot more mulch & a lot less water, it seems as drought tolerant as it needs to be in this pacific northwest garden.

Because of the tough needle-like leaves, I didn’t expect any trouble from the deer, but we did have a problem the first year this bottlebrush was planted.

A young buck came into the yard. Frustrated with his velvet antlers, he was rubbing them on anything that might help remove the itchy felt. He took on the trunk of the evergreen magnolia (surviving still, but will never reach its grand potential)… he took on the columnar cedar bushes (recovered well)… He took on the bottlebrush & it shredded under his antlers. Poor thing.

recovering bottlebrush Callistemon garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

It was a good thing I was broke at the time because otherwise I might have just dug it up & replaced it with something else. Instead, I cut back the broken stems darn near the ground. It was delightful the following year to see it spring back & grow like crazy. I caged it for a year or so, but now it’s larger & unprotected.

protected bottlebrush, Callistemon garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

There’s another young buck coming around this summer, so I’ll keep an eye out for any signs of antler rubbing & be on the ready with more wire fencing.